Not watching Sports Personality because oxymoron, but it does rather get my goat that the BBC are making hay with the “controversy” of having Tyson Fury as one of the contestants.

They are normally the first to be on their guard against any infractions of the right-on code. If they had the courage of their convictions they would have dropped him from the contest like a massively over microwaved spud, the instant he opened his big ill-informed gob.

What saved Tyson from immediate liquidation was that he’s a gypsy, so a member of an ‘oppressed minority’ and, thus, a ‘victim’ himself. Didn’t save him from having to make the humiliating ‘apology’ for having views that ‘trespassed over the boundaries of the increasingly confining liberal- left consensus’ (thanks, Rod Liddle)
I seem to recall clearly another World Heavyweight boxing champion of the ’60s loudly demanding immediate segregation of the races, an end to miscegenation and opining that members of the majority race in his country were ‘devils’. Whatever happened to him?
Anyone ask Mo his real opinions on homosexuality and women’s rights?

My dearly departed Dad was daft about sport on TV & SPOTY was his TV highlight of the year.

Over the years I watched it with him many times, but my enthusiasm for it has completely left me so it wasn’t as if I felt like I was missing out by not watching something that I haven’t watched for the thick end of 20 years.

As I said, we watched TSOM & I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.

He’s a bit of a lightweight, pun intended. Even if he’d kept his thoughts to himself if he’d have won it would suggest it was a pretty poor year for sports achievement. Nice enough guy in my book but a very mediocre boxing talent. Dull as ditch water inside the ring.

It’s interesting that the biggest furore of the BBC year seems to them nominating someone that apparently has some personality (however objectionable) for what the BBC itself calls a personality contest. There really should have been outrage when people like Tim Henman were nominated. If all the nominees had a publicly known personality, an unreconstructed thug would surely be no threat at all in the list.

I’ll tell you what *does* bother me; last night I was wrapping some presents in front of one of the Harry Potter movies and it came to my attention that the chappy they named Slytherin house after was a right evil bastard who argued for magical eugenics and suggested that mixed-blood kids shouldn’t allowed to be educated.

Those are statements that make anything Tyson Fury said seem positively genteel, and yet Hogwarts continues to have a house named after the scumbag, and actively encourages kids to associate themselves with the name. It’s the equivalent of having a school house called “Hitler” and getting all the kids in it to refer to themselves as “Hitlerians”, or similar.

Does anyone point this out? Does J K Rowling get an angry mob on her door? Noooooooo.